Hamilton proves pleasant surprise to Pistons

Rachel Nichols, Washington PostCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Richard Hamilton has an entourage now, although it is not exactly the kind of posse that would make Jay-Z proud. There are no strippers, no limo drivers.

Instead, the former Washington Wizard has at times over the last few months employed a personal chef, a nutritionist, a physical therapist and a personal trainer. It is a sizable crew, but it is not a party crew. "It's an eat-your-vegetables kind of crew," Hamilton jokes and then recites some of the mantras he's picked up from his new associates. "Don't eat fast food, build up the muscle and always have bowls of fruit. Lots of fruit. Exciting, huh?"

It is no surprise that Hamilton, 24, fell into a sedate crowd when he was traded to the Detroit Pistons last summer. These are not your father's Bad Boys, and besides, the kid from Coatesville, Pa., has never been particularly wild or flashy. Hamilton seems aware that becoming a franchise player involves more than just having the most tricked-out truck in the team parking lot.

It involves work, like the kind Hamilton did all summer, eating right and exercising to pack 13 pounds of muscle onto his willowy 6-foot-7-inch frame and make it easier to grind his way to the basket.

"He's worked very hard, and that includes defensively," Detroit coach Rick Carlisle says of the player whose defensive play was so lax at one point last season he was briefly pulled from the starting lineup.

"I was not going to judge his defensive reputation until I saw him in person," Carlisle says. "What we found was that he wasn't just a good defender, he's a better-than-good defender at the 2 spot, and playing the 2 is not easy in this league. He plays the whole game, stays after practice, has a regimen. That kind of devotion from a 24-year-old with his level of ability is exactly what we want on this team."

Of course, as with many coaches, Carlisle's favor seems to shift a bit from game to game. Hamilton does not always get a lot of minutes in the fourth quarter, even when the score is close, because Carlisle likes to reward his reserves if they are playing well. And though Hamilton is leading the Pistons in scoring and is second on the team in assists, his numbers are not so spectacularly different from last season, when he played 63 games for the Wizards.

In Washington, Hamilton averaged 35 minutes, 20 points, 2.7 assists and 3.5 rebounds. In Detroit, he has averaged just a little more than 31 minutes, 20.2 points, 2.9 assists and 3.3 rebounds. Yet even if the numbers don't always show it, Hamilton is a noticeably different player this season, involving teammates more, banging through opponents more. This is perhaps because his game snaps so soundly into Carlisle's offensive system, a series of motion-based and pick-and-roll sets that take advantage of his quickness and ability to create space with and without the ball.

But it also may be because Hamilton has simply been through more. He says he was "shocked" when the Wizards traded him to Detroit in September as part of a six-player deal that also brought Jerry Stackhouse to Washington, and that the experience toughened him.